Empowering Adjunct Lives Through Smart Strategies

Adjunct burnout is a pressing issue that can undermine the passion educators have for their work. We share effective strategies for setting boundaries, grading smarter, and maintaining work-life balance to help adjunct professors thrive without sacrificing their well-being.

• Exploring the common experiences leading to adjunct burnout 
• Setting boundaries with email response rules 
• Managing office hours and student availability 
• Emphasizing smarter grading techniques and rubric usage 
• Discussing work-life balance and time management 
• Navigating extra duties with the no free work rule 
• Establishing dedicated workspaces for productivity 
• Negotiating better compensation and teaching assignments 
• Celebrating resilience and connecting through shared experiences

Until next time, keep grading, keep growing, and keep making a difference in your students' lives.

Dr. Rutledge

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Grading Papers, the podcast dedicated to supporting and empowering adjunct professors. I'm your host, dr Randi Anita Rutledge, a 14-year adjunct professor, and I am thrilled to embark on this journey with you. Today we're talking about something that every adjunct professor will face at some point in their career burnout. If you're teaching multiple courses at multiple schools, grading nonstop, answering emails at 11 pm and still wondering why your paycheck barely covers your rent, you're not alone. The burnout is real. But here's the thing you don't have to accept burnout as part of the job. In this episode we're breaking down real strategies to help you manage your workload, set boundaries and survive adjunct life without running yourself into the ground and I mean to the ground. So why are adjuncts so burnt out? The burnout breakdown says we're overworked, we're teaching at multiple institutions with no centralized support and you've heard it before the low pay and no benefits. I'm not trying to beat that in the ground, but that's just one thing we do. We're working more hours just to survive. Then there's the whole thing with emotional labor with no office, no job security, no connections to the institutions, and then the endless grading we got I told you in one of the episodes 28 students, four assignments times, 15 weeks, large class sizes, unpaid prep time and no teaching assistant support and I know I'm saying this over and over and you might be saying, well, why don't you get another job or whatever? Well, I mean, when you're a teacher by nature and by heart, you love what you do Adjuncts. Let me ask you, when did you realize you were burnt out? Send me a message and comment and let me know and I might feature your story on a future episode. Comment and let me know and I might feature your story on a future episode.

Speaker 1: 2:08

The thing that we have to do as adjuncts, because we love this thing so much teaching we got to set boundaries. We have to take control of our workload right. So one of the ways that you could do it is set up the 48 hour email rule. Some schools already have that, but if they don't, then you could set it up for yourself and let me tell you why it works. It'll stop the students and admins from inspecting instant responses. That's one of the things that we do. We feel like you know that's an adjunct vulnerability and I've talked about this in other episodes when we see an email, we feel like we just got to rush and answer it, so that we're on the job, so we can get this contract and we could keep another contract. No, set some boundaries. And then, once they see that you answer your emails within this rule, you'll socialize them to that. So how do you implement it? You set up an auto reply. Huge right, an auto reply, such a small little thing you can do. Hey, it might say I check emails Monday to Friday and respond within 48 hours If this is an urgent situation, please. And then you insert whatever preferred contact method you want to right, preferred contact method you want to right.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Another hack is the office hours and availability. Limit availability to two fixed days instead of by appointment only. That's a good thing, but you might want to limit it to one fixed day and let it be the same day if you're teaching multiple schools and then you don't have to worry about appointments. But now, if that fixed day is on a Tuesday and students are going to submit their assignments on Sunday and you got to between Tuesday and Saturday, somebody is gonna send you an email or somebody's gonna want to talk to you or something. So think about what. The university, and then those office hours you could also use Calendly. Now that's interesting, right? You could use Calendly or Google Calendar to block specific time slots and then you could have that link. If the school allows it, you could have that link under your signature when you're sending out announcements or anything else like that, and if a student needed to talk to you, they can set up an appointment with Calendly.

Speaker 1: 4:35

When you're thinking about grading, you want to grade smarter and not harder. That's the thing that I say with my easyadjunctcom, so I think I've talked about this before. But the grading smarter, not harder is like batch grading. It's when you schedule blocks of time to grade instead of random time, and I believe that's one of the things that I needed to do in 2025, because thus far, I've only been grading at random times and I probably need to set these no, not probably. I will set these block times so that I won't get the burnout on these random times.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Then, when you think about your rubrics, your rubrics are your best friend. Oh, let me put a pin right there. There are some universities that I teach for and the courses don't have a rubric, so you have to create a rubric for the assignment so you can grade it, and the students need to see a rubric so they level set expectations for what they need to do if they want to get the highest possible grade. So for the courses that I teach that, in the assignments that do not have rubrics, I use my easyadjunctcom. I use ask easy adjunct. I put in the assignment instructions, I click on to give me a rubric and once I get that rubric, I can send that rubric to whatever assignment it is. So one of my apps is an assignment, one of them is a discussion. I can send that rubric directly to there and start the grading process. The rubrics are your best friend because they are a clear criteria. There's this less back and forth with students as far as why did I get this grade? Help me understand right and I've said this in another podcast voice feedback instead of typing, so you can give feedback in the voice by using Google Docs and voice comments. It's a faster way to grade and then you'll get that text and you're able to copy and paste into the learning management system. So, adjuncts, what are your best grading hacks? Let us know here. Respond in whatever podcast provider that you use and let us know.

Speaker 1: 6:52

So another thing, when you think about reducing the burnout, is the whole work-life balance right. You want to protect your time. Your time is so valuable and even though you love teaching and I could talk about myself even though I love teaching I have to be cognizant of my time because I have a husband, I have a family, I even have a dog who likes to walk, be walked my Siberian Husky, hallie B. And you got to understand that, even though this job is pulling from you, for all the things that is needed and your commitment to it, through this contract you have to think about your whole balance in life and protect your time. So the no free work rule right.

Speaker 1: 7:40

Adjuncts are often pressured to take on extra duties. I'm telling you, once you sign that contract, next thing you know it's like can you do some advising? Can you be on this committee? You have to take training that you don't get paid for. You might have to do office hours and like where's the office? We're adjuncts, we don't have an office. You might have to get professional development that you have to pay for. Hey, no free work. So how do you say no politely? You get a canned. Hey, I'd love to help, but my schedule is already full. Let me know if there's compensation available for this work. Didn't that sound good? I thought that sounded good, right. And if you must do extra work, find opportunities that will benefit you, like networking or professional development. So, yeah, you have to do it, but you get the result of that professional development. You can put it on your resume, you can put it on your LinkedIn and you can use it for your benefit.

Speaker 1: 8:42

You want to separate your work and your personal time, right? So you set the no free work rule. Now you need to set a no work zone no grading emails after a certain time each night. Oh, I'm guilty. Are you guilty? Do you grade? Do you sit in the bed with your laptop and grade? Do you wake up in the morning and grade? Do you grade on your phone? No, we need to set a no work zone. Remember, this podcast is all about having a strategy and setting boundaries so we don't get the burnout.

Speaker 1: 9:16

The other thing is you need to use a dedicated workspace. If you're working from home, don't work dedicated workspace. If you're working from home, don't work in the same place. You relax. I'm in my office right now. You want to be in your office and you want to set a time. You want to block out time to grading. You want to block out time for your emails, put in that auto response. You want to have a no free work rule and you want to say no as politely as you can. I'd love to help, but my schedule is already full. Let me know if there's compensation available for this work. Oh, I just feel like that should be a meme, right? I'd love to help and just say it over and over.

Speaker 1: 9:55

The other thing is, you may have to realize that you should be teaching fewer classes for the same pay, that you should be teaching fewer classes for the same pay. So that means that you will have to have a strategy and you'll have to be intentional about the courses that you teach and where you teach. So consider online teaching less commute time and more flexibility. I wanna tell you after 14 years, for the last seven years I have only been teaching online and for the last five years only teaching asynchronously and that only happened because I changed my mindset about it. I was running around because I thought that was what I was supposed to do teach on the ground or at the location. But when I changed my mindset about what courses I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach them. Knowing the value that I bring to this university, it was easier for me to say, hey, all right, I'll teach online two hours one time a week. And then I realized you know, I was spending a lot of time doing that. So I reduced it to just asynchronous where I'm doing the grading, I'm doing the emails again at block time, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 11:08

So you have to consider what you're going to do. Take that power in your hands and listen. Don't have any fear that you won't get a certain job. There's no scarcity. Every single university in the United States is hiring and continuing to hire adjuncts, and that percentage of hiring adjuncts is going up exponentially. You just need to create a strategy, your goals and say what you will do and what you won't do.

Speaker 1: 11:40

Right, then you negotiate for better courses. If you've been teaching undergraduate and you have master's degrees, ask to teach graduate courses. There's no difference in them except for the course and what the expectations. Right, then you can get a higher pay per credit or more stable contracts. Because if, especially if you get a cohort, if you get a cohort in a graduate school, that is starting, these students start out together and you walk that cohort through and your credential to teach. I think there was one university I was able to a credential to teach 20 courses. I was able to teach 10 courses in that whole program and I walked with those students all the way through the cohort and that was the best experience I had. So you can do that. Take your power back. Say what you're going to do as it relates to your teaching. Say how you're going to do it, when you're going to do it, where you're going to do it. So, adjuncts, have you ever successfully negotiated better working conditions? Share your tips with us and I'll feature them on an upcoming episode. I want you to share that information on the podcast provider that you use. If you're at Buzzsprout, there's a way for you to comment and share that information.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Adjunct, burnout is real, but it doesn't have to be permanent. You have to set your boundaries. You have to grade smarter and not harder. You have to pick the time when you're gonna do emails. You need to pick your office time when you're going to do emails. You need to pick your office time when you're going to do that, and by doing this, you start to protect your time, and protecting your time can help you stay in this game without losing your sanity. If you've got a burnout story, a survival hack or just one event, I want to hear from you. Reach out on this Buzzsprout podcast or send me a message so that you get a chance to be featured. We thank you for tuning in to Grading Papers. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with your colleagues and friends. Until next time, keep grading, keep growing and keep making a difference in your students' lives.